Homo sovieticus

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Homo Sovieticus is a word creation from the 1960s, the exact origin of which is unknown. The oldest evidence comes from Max Mohl (1968) l, Fernando de Cambra (1975) and the Jesuit and Sovietologist Alexis Ulysses Floridi (1977), the term was popularized by the Russian dissident Alexander Zinoviev in his novel of the same name (1982, dt. First edition 1984). It sarcastically describes how people in the Soviet Union changed for the worse under the ruling system. A similar term in everyday Russian is the "Sowok" (Совок) derived from the word Soviet, which is also synonymous with "dustpan".

Properties of Homo Sovieticus

According to Zinoviev, Homo Sovieticus is essentially an opportunist who accepts everything from his leadership and wants to take on as little individual responsibility as possible. He does his job according to regulations without any initiative of his own. For the Homo Sovieticus stealing is public property only a minor offense . For him, the term public property is roughly synonymous with “does not belong to anyone”. Against this background, the Homo Sovieticus steals z. B. regularly items from his workplace, be it for his own use or for resale. Through censorship and travel restrictions, the Homo Sovieticus has an idealized image of Western culture. The forbidden and exotic of this culture exert an even greater attraction on him because it is officially demonized.

During and after the collapse of the Soviet Union , many problems that arose in economic and social life were associated with precisely these characteristics of Homo Sovieticus. Like all controversial terms, however, Homo Sovieticus is pointed and unsuitable for describing an entire society.

The Estonian - Canadian historian Andres Kasekamp also depicts Homo Sovieticus as a person who, according to the will of the state leadership (Kasekamp mentions Andropov as an example ), should no longer have any national roots or identity (of the individual Soviet republics ) and see the entire USSR as his home . Kasekamp refers here to the song Мой адрес - Советский Союз (Eng . "My address - Soviet Union") from 1978 with the lines Мой адрес не дом и не улица - Мой адресю (no Мой адресю (Совеский is no house and my address - Совесий) Street - my address is "Soviet Union").

The Nobel Prize winner Swetlana Alexejewitsch dedicated her book Secondhand Time to Homo sovieticus .

Based on the communist propaganda of the early Soviet Union

The point of friction for Zinoviev was probably the communist propaganda of the early Soviet Union, to which his Homo Sovieticus stands in stark contrast. Their new man or Soviet man should become a kind of “ superman ”: When the “exploitative order” is abolished, a “new man” will grow up in a socialist society, free from lies, deceit, cruelty, theft, laziness, and drunkenness. In 1916, the revolutionary poet Mayakovsky prophesied : “And he, the free man I cry for, man, he is coming, I vouch for it.” Leon Trotsky wrote in 1923: “Man will become incomparably stronger, smarter, finer ... the human average will rise to the level of Aristotle , Goethe , Marx . "

Soviet poster art is also known for depicting the New Man .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Latin for Soviet man, education analogous to anthropological terms according to the most characteristic quality. See Homo ludens , Homo oeconomicus etc.
  2. ↑ Max Mohl: Toi, toi, toi, Towarischtsch - Travels and Reflections in the Soviet Union. Bertelsmann, Gütersloh, 1968, accessed on February 28, 2018 .
  3. ↑ Fernando P de Cambra: THE HOMO SOVIETICUS. La vida actual en Rusia. Petronio, Barcelona, ​​1975, accessed February 28, 2018 (Spanish).
  4. ↑ Alessio Ulisse Floridi SJ: In tema di dissenso e di Ostpolitik . Interview by Roberto de Mattei. No. 32 . Roma 1977, p. 3-4 (Italian).
  5. ↑ Survival in a roundabout way. In: nzz.ch . Archived from the original on September 6, 2012 ; accessed on October 14, 2018 .
  6. ^ Andres Kasekamp: History of the Baltic States, London 2010, p. 158.
  7. ^ [1] Text on SovMusic.ru, accessed on July 13, 2011
  8. ↑ Tim Neshitov: Homo sovieticus sueddeutsche.de, November 2, 2016.
  9. ↑ Leon Trotsky: Literature and Revolution . Arbeiterpresseverlag, Essen 1994, p. 252. Quoted from Klaus-Georg Riegel: Marxism as a “political religion” . In: Gerhard Besier and Hermann Lübbe (eds.): Political religion and religious policy. Between totalitarianism and civil liberty . Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, Göttingen 2005, p. 33

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